The future begins with you: Ars reviews Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a triumphant return to form, and it proves to be …

The original Deus Ex remains a beloved PC game, so the fact that sequel Invisible War was hobbled by console-based development became one of the real tragedies of gaming. The third entry, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, has been developed by an all-new team, which saw its publisher merged into Square Enix and then had its game delayed. Fans had little reason for hope.

But something amazing happened. Square Enix sent the press a ten-hour preview version of the game, and early reviews were glowing. The content leaked, and that caused even more gamers to take a second look at the game. Developers emphasized the PC version of the game and brought in an outside company to ensure that the game supported DirectX11 features and that mouse and keyboard controls worked perfectly. The press received the PC version as the official review version—a rarity in this business.

All the effort paid off. Not only is the game an amazing return to form for Deus Ex but the PC version does nearly everything right.

Welcome to Detroit

The human augmentations being sold by Sarif Industries can save a life, or at least improve one dramatically. Soldiers can get mechanical replacements for limbs lost in war; neural enhancements can save people from degenerative diseases. You play as Adam Jensen, who knows enough about second chances. After being a part of a police action that went wrong, he's now head of security for Sarif Industries, reporting to David Sarif himself. Still, Jensen isn't sure about the technology he works to protect. If so much good can come from this work, why do so many of the augmentations have military applications?

Others share his misgivings about a future that might be more machine than human, but they have more violent ways of expressing their thoughts. During an attack on Sarif Industries, people he cares about are lost. Despite an impressive aptitude for both hand-to-hand fighting and firearms, Jensen is broken and left for dead. Sarif isn't done with him, though, and has a brutal solution to his host of physical problems: keep Jensen alive by pouring every available augmentation into his body. When he wakes up, he's something new—and vastly ahead of the curve. He also has a strong motivation to find the people who attacked his boss, his loved ones, and in a very real way took his life. Jensen begins to travel the world with Sarif's support in order to put things right.

Fans can take a deep breath: they will get what they want from a Deus Ex game in this release. The story is dense, complete with twists, interesting characters, and far-flung locations. Large hub sections allow you to talk with people, pick up side-quests, and search for hidden surprises and goodies. You'll gain experience for everything you do, from finding new locations to taking down enemies. The game has no traditional leveling system; it simply gives you a point to upgrade your augmentations when you reach 5,000 experience points, then takes your experience level back down to zero.

Depending on how you upgrade augmentations, you can be an armored tank, a stealthy assassin, or something in between. You'll never be told how to complete a mission, you'll merely be asked to accomplish a goal and then set loose on it. My personal advice: beef up your hacking skill early, as it's the easiest way to unlock many opportunities in the game's opening sections. It doesn't hurt that the real-time hacking mini-game is genuinely enjoyable and can provide some tense moments when you need to break into an area quickly.

The weapon system is likewise refreshing. You have limited slots in your inventory for weapons, items, and ammunition, and the only way to upgrade weapons is to install a series of kits that give you bigger clips, silencers, and laser sights. This makes juggling inventory space interesting: if you need to drop your assault rifle to make room for something else and then you move to the next area, that gun you've upgraded is gone. I loaded my handgun with upgrades and turned it into a silenced, laser-sighted killing machine. I kept it with me throughout the entire game, and it began to feel like my personal sidearm instead of a generic weapon or throwaway upgrade. You'll also find or recover everything from stun guns to sniper rifles, along with some increasingly exotic weapons.

And oh, the gunplay. By holding the right mouse button, you switch to a third-person mode to use cover, and you can slink along walls or duck behind barriers, blind-firing to clear the way or popping up for a moment to take down an enemy with a clean shot to the head. While your health does regenerate, it hardly matters given the brutality of the gun battles; bad positions usually have few ways out. You'll die often, and before you beef up your character with augmentations, death takes only a shot or two.

The gunfights in Human Revolution aren't quite chess, but they're a long way from checkers—especially when you learn to move silently and take down two enemies at the same time, by hand. The third-person cover system wasn't shoe-horned into the game, either, and it makes sense in a deep way. Depending on play style, Human Revolution feels like a great action game or a slower-paced RPG.